Six people are suing the city of Dallas over its longstanding ordinance prohibiting protestors from displaying signs within 75 feet of a roadway. That suit was filed in federal court last week -- by the very same six people who sued the city in April over Section 28-158.1 of the Dallas City Code just days before the opening of the George W. Bush Presidential Center. At the time they got what they wanted -- a federal judge's OK to exercise their First Amendment right to protest much closer to the street than city law allows.

"The Court is not convinced that an ordinary person of even extraordinary intelligence would understand that the restricted seventy-five foot sign-free zone actually begins from the outside sidewalk of Central Expressway’s access road," wrote U.S. District Judge Jorge A. Solis. He added: "The Court finds that this inconsistent enforcement and the confusion surrounding what constitutes a violation of the Ordinance is a result of its vagueness."

Between then and now much has happened, but long story short: The city and the six plaintiffs -- Paul Heller, Leslie Harris, Deborah Beltran, Gary Staurd, Diane Baker and Mavis Belisle -- agreed to move the case back to district court. A hearing had been scheduled for next week in which city attorneys were going to try to get the case dismissed for lack of jurisdiction, but hours before they could do that the plaintiffs filed their own motion to nonsuit the case. In other words, they dismissed it before a judge could, which was fine with the city.

But then the city discovered the six were back in federal court making the same claims -- that the ordinance is vague and unconstitutional.

"The problem is there's really no mechanism in the state court system for granting the kind of relief we wanted," says Bruce Anton, one of the attorneys representing the six plaintiff. So he's filed the same suit seeking the same relief -- the demise of the ordinance.

Essentially, says Anton, the city code says "people can't walk up and down the sidewalk in protest. Sidewalks are the ultimate public forum. That's quintessentially where you can exercise your constitutional rights. We ask the ordinance be declared void as overly broad. There's no precedent for prohibiting protest on the sidewalks. So we're asking the federal court to declare that void so that people can continue to hold these protests on the sidewalks in and around some of these major arenas in Dallas."

Heller, Harris, Beltran, Staurd, Baker and Belisle are pressing their case because five of them were fined by the city in January for a protest near Mockingbird Station back in January, during which they held up signs that read "I ❤ the Bill of Rights" and "I Love the First Amendment." All but Staurd were hit with fines of around $300 for violating the ordinance, though Heller was hit with something called "solicitation by coercion," according to city records. It's unclear why.

In court records filed in April the city defended the ordinance as "a reasonable, content-neutral restriction on the time, place, and manner of speech permitted along the side of highways in the City in the interest of public safety." Today, First Assistant City Attorney Chris Bowers reiterates that sentiment in a short statement dispatched via email: “In 1989, the City Council adopted the ordinance that is being challenged in this lawsuit. We believe the ordinance is valid and will vigorously defend it.”

City Hall sources to whom we spoke earlier today also maintain this latest challenge to the ordinance should have been filed in muni court, where the five are fighting their citations. Anton vehemently disagrees.

"We can prevail by having a judge throw these out, which is true," he says. "But the problem is until you get injunctive relief that the ordinance is overly broad they can still write citations and you still have to go to court to defend your rights. The municipal court doesn't have the right to declare something unconstitutional."